We speed through the produce department, my caretaker expertly sifting through apples, green beans, purple potatoes, red onions, lives, gold, memories, hands. Indra squeezes, smells, scrutinizes, knowing how each fruit and vegetable looks in its infancy, rooted to dowager earth by its plant placenta…
Associate Editor Madeleine Wattenberg: With its references to plant placentas and NASA-soft wheelchair seats, Mee-ok’s nonfiction piece hints at science fiction; in this way, the space of the grocery store is defamiliarized as the speaker and her caretaker expertly navigate the deli counter, the produce section, the place “where it is always winter.” In vivid, tumbling language, this essay asks us to consider new angles—what it means to look up, to be looked down at, to navigate a world built for someone else’s eye level.
